23 July 2004

FOX HUNTING Up on Bell's Hill, hours after sundown; watchless thus timeless; starlight printed on the earth below:   all the lights of Exeter in a black bowl.  We breathe through our mouths.  No wind in the hillside beeches   or the hawthorn hedge we crouch behind.  Bob looms at my side, log-still, indistinct, yet electric   with attention, his cradled shotgun staring at the ground, round-eyed.  An owl quavers in the ice-heart of the wood.   Movement at the field's edge: shadow on shadow; an elision of shape and formlessness.  The fox slides along a dark rail, single-   purposed, the fanatic's way - hand over hand through the long grass at the field's edge.   Bob's gun coughs twice, dry-voiced.  Night cracks like slate; shards fly and the world tips up.   We stare, bloodshot, jangling, into the bright darkness. Shadows realign at the field's edge. Night self-heals, like water.     I posted an earlier version of this poem over a year ago. I’ve been gradually refining it over some 15 years, dropping a word here, adding one there, tinkering with line lengths & rhythmic properties. It’s been published twice but I have never felt that its final form has emerged.  This will be its last incarnation. hotcakencyclopedia.com/ ho.LittleFox.html   11:14:22 PM    Mmm? [] Traffic jam..? 9:52:12 PM    Mmm? []

© Copyright 2004 Dick Jones. Last update: 01/08/2004; 23:45:32.